Starting Early as First Time Home Buyers

June 20, 2017

STARTING EARLY AS FIRST TIME HOME BUYERS

The last few weeks, I have been discussing how to Make Money with Real Estate. My husband and I have spent our entire married life buying and selling homes. Our philosophy? We hold our homes lightly, know when it’s time to look for a new project, and wisely choose our home improvement projects to maximize profit. The most important element of our success revolves around the fact that we started early as a first time home buyers. If I could give any advice to millennial readers, it would be to make it a goal to buy a home in your twenties. The quicker you get started, the more time you have to accumulate gains in the Pasadena real estate market.

A FEW CONFESSIONS

As I discuss how to build wealth through your personal residence, I plan on using my own home purchases and sales as a case study. I know that learning through example is preferable to me, so I will assume the same is true for you too. To start, I want to be honest about a few benefits we received from the beginning that definitely helped us:

We got started very early in marriage and home ownership. In fact, I owned a home before I even graduated from college.

We had a family member who was a Realtor and had successfully made money buying, fixing up, and selling homes. She was very helpful in identifying good projects.

We had family members who graciously loaned us money (tax-free) for our down payment. Because prices were accelerating so quickly, we were able to refinance and pay back the loan in a short time period.

My husband is very handy and did much of the work on our early homes himself

We are both natural risk takers and are willing to upend our lives to pursue a great opportunity

We work very well together on household projects and find it a bonding activity

I realize that we are blessed, especially with the financial help we received from family. I know that most millennial first time home buyers don’t have the benefit of this type of assistance. Even though we had a leg up, though, we still had to be very careful with our money. Most of our funds were put back into our house. There was not a lot of new furniture, vacations, or fancy cars. We made housing our priority, and it was a good choice.

GET PRE-APPROVED

Although it is great to buy a home as early as possible, it is never too late to get started. You might be surprised that you are closer to your goal of home ownership than you think. The best place to start? Call a lender and get pre-approved for a home loan. The pre-approval process will require you to reveal all of your assets, your yearly income, and your current monthly obligations. After running some numbers, the lender will let you know how much money you can borrow and how much money you would need for a down payment. Without facts, you have no idea where you really stand.

I suggest you call one of the following wonderful lenders. There are a lot of good ones, but these three get the job done particularly well.